Upon the recent completion and publication of my new Chapter 20—Exchange, Finance, and the Store of Value, for the revised edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, I loaded it into NotebookLM and asked it to create a video overview. I continue to be amazed at the quality of the output that this AI tool produces. Here it is:
It has long been my position that a real alternative to fiat money as a means of payment requires reclaiming the “credit commons,” i.e. establishing community control over credit. It is producers and sellers of real value who are the ones who are actually qualified to issue a currency into circulation. They can do so individually by using their own private voucher currencies redeemable for the goods and services they are ready, willing, and able to provide, or they can do it in cooperation with others by pooling their commitments and jointly issuing a common voucher currency. Such a currency can then circulate generally for other to use to pay one another instead of using dollars. Euros, pounds, or other government fiat currencies.
My paper titled, Invoice Factoring as the Basis for a Digital Token Currency, presented at the RAMICS Conference in Rome on November 6, 2024, describes how that can be achieved by creating a digital token currency that, unlike present-day crypto currencies, is based on, and redeemable for real goods and services. This presentation describes the structure, processes, and protocols for creating and circulating a digital voucher token currency on a continuous recurrent basis. I’ve summarized my proposal in this 12-minute video posted on YouTube.
Today, out of curiosity, I asked Copilot this question:
“How would E. C. Riegel organize the exchange of value among producers and intermediaries in the distribution process?”
Here is Copilots’ surprisingly accurate response to that question. It is, in effect, a brief summary of his book Private Enterprise Money.
E. C. Riegel envisioned a radically decentralized and voluntary system of value exchange that bypassed both government-issued money and centralized banking. His proposed framework, known as the Valun Exchange System, was designed to empower producers and intermediaries to coordinate trade through a self-regulated, non-political monetary mechanism.
Here’s how it would work in practice:
1. Voluntary Association of Producers: Producers and intermediaries would form a cooperative network called a Valun Exchange. Membership would be voluntary and based on mutual trust and creditworthiness.
2. Private Credit as Currency: Instead of using state-issued money, members would issue credit to one another in the form of Valun units. These units would be backed by the members’ productive capacity and promises to deliver goods or services—not by gold, fiat, or government decree.
3. Accounts, Not Cash: Transactions would be recorded as debits and credits in members’ accounts, similar to a mutual credit system. No physical currency would be needed; the system would operate through bookkeeping entries.
4. Intermediaries as Facilitators: Distributors, wholesalers, and retailers would participate as both buyers and sellers, using their Valun accounts to settle transactions. Their role would be to facilitate the flow of goods, not to extract value through speculative finance.
5. Self-Limiting Credit: A member’s ability to issue credit would be limited by their past performance and the confidence of the network. This would prevent inflation and ensure that credit was grounded in real economic activity.
6. No Interest, No Taxes: Since the system was private and voluntary, it would not involve interest-bearing loans or taxation. Riegel believed this would eliminate many distortions in the traditional monetary system.
In essence, Riegel’s model treated money not as a commodity or a government tool, but as a social contract among producers—a means of measuring and facilitating exchange based on trust and productivity. It was a bold attempt to return the power of money creation to the people actually producing value.
If you’d like, I can sketch out a visual flow of how this system would operate among producers, intermediaries, and consumers.
To that offer, I answered, “yes,” but in successive attempts Copilot failed to produce an accurate flow diagram. I have for many years been using my own diagram of credit flows in mutual credit clearing systems. Here it is below. If you substitute the word “valun” for “Currency vouchers,” this diagram shows exactly what Riegel was describing:
The “Trusted Producer” depicted in the upper right begins the process by using their line of credit to purchase something for an employee, supplier or contractor. Those credit vouchers then flow in the numbered sequence, the final step being when the Trusted Issuer accepts them back in payment for the goods or services they sell, thus completing the circuit of reciprocity. Note that at each step of the way, goods and services are circulating in the opposite direction to the voucher credits (or valuns).
I then pointed out to Copilot that it had failed to specify the units in which valun credits were to be denominated. This was its response:
Great point, Thomas. Riegel proposed that all debits and credits in his system would be denominated in a unit called the Valun—short for “value unit”. This was not just a name, but a deliberate attempt to establish a new standard of value independent of national currencies and political influence.
At the system’s launch, the Valun was intended to be roughly equivalent in purchasing power to the U.S. dollar, simply to ease adoption and pricing familiarity. However, over time, its value would be maintained internally by the productivity and trustworthiness of the network’s members, not by fiat or commodity backing.
So, in essence, every transaction—whether between producers, intermediaries, or consumers—would be recorded in Valuns, making it a closed-loop accounting system grounded in mutual credit and real economic activity.
Would you like a breakdown of how Valun pricing might work in practice, or how it could be stabilized over time?
I already knew how Riegel proposed to stabilize the Valun pricing unit, and I am not satisfied with it being adequate. I make my case in a document which Copilot cited as a source; it is contained in a previous post to my website, E. C. Riegel’s Valun Mutual Money Plan, but the reference was to a site other than my own. It would be better to read the original post on my site. That post contains the full text of the Valun Mutual Money Plan, together with my comments and critique. I believe that serious students would do well to read it.
The latest chapter in my new 2024 edition ofThe End of Money and the Future of Civilization, has now been published. Here is an excerpt:
The entirety of money, banking, and finance is comprised of claims and obligations. — Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
It was in a dusty old bookshop close to the British Museum in London that I discovered a slim volume that was to complete for me the picture of how money has evolved over time. I had been traveling in Europe and the United Kingdom in the summer of 2001 with my then partner, Donna, attending conferences, meeting with friends and cohorts, and enjoying the sights, sounds, and cultures of the Old World. It was actually Donna who discovered the book in the basement stacks and brought it to me, saying, “What about this one?” The book was The Meaning of Money by Hartley Withers. Although I had already been engaged in intensive research into the subjects of money and banking for more than twenty years and had written three books of my own on the subject, I had not previously heard of Withers, but it was evident that he must have been, in his day, a recognized authority on the subject, and that his book must have served for a long time as a leading text; I surmised that from the fact that the volume I held in my hands was the seventh edition, published in 1947, of a work first published in 1909, and that Withers had been the editor of The Economist magazine from 1916 to 1921. Reading Withers crystallized my understanding of the double transformation that money had undergone during the previous three hundred years, an understanding that afforded a clearer comprehension of the nature and significance of the changes that have taken place, an understanding that prepares the ground from which to launch the next great improvement in the exchange process.
For now, you can read or listen to the entire chapter at Future Brightly:
It will also be published soon here, and on my own Substack channel. Further chapters will continue to be posted as they are completed. Watch for Chapter 10 to be posted soon.
As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed, Thomas
My interview on the Pelle Neroth Taylor show on Thursday, May 30, 2024 was recorded and is now available. My portion of the show can be heard here, and a transcript can be seen here.
This is a wide-ranging conversation about the problems with the present political system of money and exchange, and the decentralized exchange mechanisms that have been developing in parallel with it, including both commercial and grassroots currencies and credit clearing exchanges.
In this issue: * Chapter 8—The Separation of Money and State * Upcoming interview on TNT Radio * Six Lessons Learned About Community Currencies * Mutual Credit Panel Discussion * Symbiotic Culture ____________________ Readers have already seen the first two items in the posts below. Here are the remaining three items: ____________________ 6 Lessons Learned from 40 years of experimentation with local and community currencies.
Over the past several decades, many local and community currencies have come, and most of them have gone. By observing all that, and by my own research and experience with Tucson Traders and LETS Sonora, I’ve discovered several fundamental principles that have led me to the prescriptions I have been offering. Here is a partial list:
1. A community currency, to be truly effective, must be more than a local version of the existing political fiat currency. 2. A community currency must be created independently of the banking system. 3. A community currency can be created by local producers of real value in the form of vouchers that they can spend into circulation. 4. The amount of vouchers spent into circulation must not exceed the amount that an issuer is able to redeem by delivering goods and services within a few months’ time. 5. Such voucher currencies may wander away from the local community, but they must eventually return to the community to be redeemed by the issuer. 6. Voucher currencies must have an expiration date or demurrage fee to stimulate a healthy velocity of circulation, and to guarantee their timely redemption.
Zachary Marlow, founder of the Moneyless Society initiative, has recently posted the video of a panel discussion on mutual credit which he hosted several weeks ago. I was one of the panelists, along with Matthew Slater, Dil Green, and Matthew Schutte. You can view it on YouTube. ___________________ Birthing the Symbiotic Age
Here is something that is truly different from the way most of us are accustomed to thinking about positive social, economic, and political change.
Richard Flyer has been working for decades to facilitate the emergence of what he calls a “Symbiotic Culture.” Inspired in large part by his involvement with the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka, Richard has been describing in his new book an “Ancient Blueprint for a New Creation.” The book, which is being published in sections, goes beyond theoretical reasoning or wishful thinking, it is a story or Richard’s journey of discovery and his real-world experience in acting as a catalyst to help that “new creation” to come about. In a recently published section titled, Chapter 7, Part 2, The Conscious Community Network and Local Food Ecosystem,Richard describes how the Northern Nevada Local Food System Network was able to emerge out of his one-on-one conversations with six “super connectors,” showing them how their common interests could be served by connecting their individual “silos” and cooperating for the benefit of all. He reports that, “Through these six people’s networks alone, we expanded the playing field for our food network to almost one hundred organizations and the fifty thousand people they were connected to!” In explaining the success of the network, Richard described it this way:
“A Symbiotic Network is not a separate organization. Instead, it is a community-wide, multi-hub, network-centric ecosystem — really an “organism” — where power is shared by the stakeholders.”
It’s a virtuous, purpose-based network for mutual benefit, where participants ask, “What can I give?” It’s not a fixed coalition where each organization only wants to “get” something.
It’s a unique “umbrella” or “meta-network” designed to enhance the work and provide tangible benefit to each member organization and the whole community – not just another competing silo.
It’s a completely independent network, not controlled by an existing non-profit, business, or local government.
It’s an informal consortium that connects and proliferates the good in a region in one or more multiple domains (e.g., around food, education, health care, neighborhoods, arts and culture)—not a formal organization with a formal board of directors, executive director, CEO, employees, and budget.”
I am confident that if you read or listen to all three sections of his Chapter 7, you will want to go back to the beginning of the book to hear the rest of Richard’s remarkable story. ____________ Wishing you a pleasant summer, Thomas
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. —Kenneth Boulding, Economist
Chapter Six — Usury, the Engine of Destruction, of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, new 2024 edition, is now available at Ken Richings; Substack channel, Future Brightly. in advance of its publication here on my website and elsewhere. Access to my work remains free, but please reward Ken for his good work by opting to take a paid subscription to his Substack channel. Further chapters will continue to be posted as they are completed on Future Brightly, and two weeks later on this and the other sites. Watch for Chapter Seven to be posted in about two weeks.
As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed, Thomas ___________________
Chapter 3, The Contest for Rulership—Two Opposing Philosophies. is now available. You can find it on my website, complete with end notes, along with previously published chapters 1 and 2. Click on the links below to access the text and the audio narration. Additional chapters will be posted as they are completed here. I expect to complete Chapter 4 and post it around the end of this year.
As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed, Thomas ___________________
The first edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, was published by Chelsea Green Publishing in 2009. While it remains as relevant today as it was when first published the printed book has been out of print for several years. But, having had the rights reverted to me by my publisher, I am making the entire book available for free in PDF format. You can read it or download it HERE. If you would like a hard copy of the first edition used copies can still be found on Amazon.com, Abe books, Thrift books and elsewhere.
Better still, you can avail yourself of the new revised and expanded 2024 edition which I have been working on for almost two years and is almost complete. Eighteen chapters have already been posted and can be freely read or download HERE.
My previous books, as published, may be freely accessed in digital format by clicking the title below.
as relevant today as it was when first published the printed book has been out of print for several years. But, having had the rights reverted to me by my publisher, I am making the entire book available for free in PDF format. You can read it or download it HERE. If you would like a hard copy of the first edition used copies can still be found on Amazon.com, Abe books, Thrift books and elsewhere.
Better still, you can avail yourself of the new revised and expanded 2024 edition which I have been working on for almost two years and is almost complete. Eighteen chapters have already been posted and can be freely read or download HERE.
Beyond Money
Beyond Money 